Hmmm.... That Mercadian Masques poll. I was really stuck between Bribery and High Market. Market goes in more decks, but Bribery can sometimes just win a game... Had to give it to Bribery.
I've been wanting to build a lands matter deck for years now, but not how most lands matter decks tend to be. I'm not building a Landfall deck. I want to build a deck that's at least 60% lands (maybe 70%) where the whole purpose is moving lands from zone to zone for profit, like Retrace cards and Life from the Loam to move lands from my hand into the grave and vise versa.
I'm having two problems:
1: Win conditions that revolve around lands. Worm Harvest is a pretty good start, but I need more. I need something like an infinite combo, like the old Crucible of Worlds + Zuran Orb + Fastbond combo but legal.
Anyone know of some cards that can help? I know older cards pretty well, but I haven't played much in the past few years and don't know a lot of the new stuff.
I want to like Arixmethes, but I feel that for all his unique design, they played it a bit too safe with him.
It honestly feels like they were playing this whole release a bit too safe. I can honestly say that every legendary creature spoiled thus far (looking only at mtgsalvations spoiler list) is a bit disappointing in some way, and even a bunch of other cards spoiled thus far, but I'm not going to spend two hours typing up why they all disappoint me.
I've got 4 commanders from this set that interest me, though I think only one of them will be able to keep that interest past a few games with the deck.
Gyrus, Waker of Corpes is the one that interests me the most. He makes tokens of the cards, without paying any mana, and can do larger creatures as the game goes on. It's going to be a weird fusion of reanimator, token, and combo that I think is going to be a blast to play. I do have the concern that the deck with turn into "good stuff" fairly easily which I am going to try and avoid. I think this will be the the second, ever, Jund commander to peak my interest; the first being Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire.
Varina, Lich Queen is a pretty solid zombie commander. She's far from the top of the list for commanders I want to use for zombie tribal, but mostly cause I haven't actually played zombie tribal yet. I greatly dislike her second ability and I would have liked to be able to target an opponent's cards even if it were limited to creatures. She seems good aside from the second ability which I find fairly disappointing with two colors that are very good at recursion effects.
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is pretty good. She has the potential to be pretty powerful and fun. Tutor for a high cmc card and use a bunch of Brainstorm effects with Yuriko to kill everyone. I'd find it fun for one or two games and then never play it again. There aren't enough ninjas to do any sort of half ok tribal without Conspiracy. Interesting while being super boring and I'll probably never actually build now that I think about it.
Is it just me or is the Hydra even worse than the spider? Like seriously can someone explain how the Hydra is a thing? Like, what a terrible reanimator general. I'm actually kind of upset. Jund is my fav combo and all 3 were disappointments. At least I still have Prossh
Gyrus, Waker of Corpses? I like it, well a lot better than everything else. It's almost a colorshifted Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. It's ability is weaker as it doesn't bring the actual creature back, but you also don't have to pay mana for it and it's based on how much you payed for him instead of just being 2 power or less. Honestly, with the access to token doublers and the fact that Gyrus is going to get bigger as the game goes on, I think he's actually stronger than Alesha. Imagine casting Gyrus for six the turn after a doubling season, swinging with haste, and making two Protean Hulks to sac at end of combat. I think Gyrus has the ability to be pretty nuts, and doesn't need voltron cards to make it big enough to be able to attack late game.
Gyrus is actually the second commander spoiled that I actually want to use. Really hoping Varchild is in the Jund deck. Though, I am wildly disappointed at the fact that the only deck that has an actual theme is the Izzet Artifact deck. Honestly kind of wishing they had stuck to tribals for a few more releases.
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer seems good until you realize it makes a token and allows you to shift your copies once per turn cycle, only during your upkeep, and on a 6cmc 4/4. My only comparison is Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, but Brudiclad let's you copy any permanent type and Trostani's ability is reusable as it's a tap ability and not an upkeep trigger. Both go rather nuts with Helm of the Host, but trostani can do it a lot faster with some untap effects. I was honestly a lot more excited for Trostani than Brudiclad and Mirrorworks is one of my favorite cards ever.
It's not during upkeep. It's at the beginning of combat.
I'm not saying the Brudicad is good (it costs 6 mana after all) but some funny memes are going to be made with helm of the host.
Yeah, beginning of combat does make it a lot better. Edited my post for the correction. I do still stand by my Trostani comparison. Though, now that I think about it, Trostani does have access to 4 token doublers and has an ability that can keep you alive near indefinitely so long as no one combos off or get's in commander damage. Casual meta, Trostani is just better imo. Competitive meta, they're both going to lose a lot more often than they win.
As for the legendary creatures... I'm not impressed.
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer seems good until you realize it makes a token and allows you to shift your copies once per turn cycle, only during your upkeep, and on a 6cmc 4/4. My only comparison is Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, but Brudiclad let's you copy any permanent type and Trostani's ability is reusable as it's a tap ability and not an upkeep trigger. Both go rather nuts with Helm of the Host, but trostani can do it a lot faster with some untap effects. I was honestly a lot more excited for Trostani than Brudiclad and Mirrorworks is one of my favorite cards ever
wat. that totally incorrect. its once PER COMBAT on your turn. and it gives your tokens haste. and you can make any kind of token into a creature or artifact like turning a ton of treasure or clue tokens into hasty creatures. its gonna be quite strong
Yeah, yeah. Someone made the combat correction already. Also, just because I'm already replying to you, please work on your spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Honestly... I already feel like this commander set is going to disappoint me. All 4 planeswalker commanders spoiled (they did decide to stop doing 5 decks and are doing 4 now right?), and Saheeli is the only one even half decent and only because of her two +1's and mostly for the one that'll let you Comet Storm win out of nowhere. None of the planeswalkers actually have impact at all. Saheeli is the only one with an ability that can actually win the game with any sort of regularity, and it's not even her -; let's face it, the esper 'walker's -6 is absolute random chance as to whether it'll ever even be useful let alone game winning. Bant 'walker is another The Chain Veil combo, but it can't even win the game with it unless you -1 on a Staff of Nin or something of the like. It seems like WotC pulled another planeswalker deck thing and made them intentionally subpar so that they would never be viable in legacy, though to a lesser extent (I'm not going to **** on them that bad). They just seem generally weak. I can't even think of anything I'd run them in the 99 of, Saheeli excluded of course.
As for the legendary creatures... I'm not impressed.
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer seems good until you realize it makes a token and allows you to shift your copies once per turn cycle, but on a 6cmc 4/4. My only comparison is Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, but Brudiclad let's you copy any permanent type and Trostani's ability is reusable as it's a tap ability and not an upkeep trigger. Both go rather nuts with Helm of the Host, but trostani can do it a lot faster with some untap effects. I was honestly a lot more excited for Trostani than Brudiclad and Mirrorworks is one of my favorite cards ever.
Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor seems interesting. Interesting where I'd want to drop Repercussion, give everyone a bunch of tokens, and then Blaphemous Act for the win, but I could do that in any red deck. Varchild really, really needed some sort of evasion. A 3/3 for 3 with no evasion that gives opponents tokens when it deals damage is honestly hot garbage. Either you ramp it out early and give people tokens that are going to help them, or it comes down on turn 3 and is completely negligible. Honestly just hot garbage. Grand Melee seems funny, but the second someone plays Skullclamp and just starts winning the game is... Varchild is just bad. Interesting, potentially monored grouphug, but otherwise just bad.
Tawnos had so much potential as a card. Almost any variation of his ability would be good. Why does he have to tap for it? WWWWHHHYYY? The only reason I'm not considering him strictly worse than Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient is because he's also blue. Yeah, he can copy activated abilities, but Rings of Brighthearth is a card. Had this been Rings of Brighthearth on a commander, even with an artifact restriction, would have been amazing. The fact that it costs UR and has him tap to do it is absolute just disappointing (I really almost typed garbage there... I really wanted to type garbage there.). Pemmin's Aura and Freed from the Real are cards, but he's just so disappointing.
Honestly, I don't see the hype. I mean, Eminence is really strong and Edgar's ability is a lot stronger than it would seem at first, but they're still 1/1's. It's still nowhere near as strong as a typical elf, goblin, or zombie tribal. Edgar, and vamp tribal in general, is forced to rely on a bunch of low cmc and sometimes generally sub-par creatures to make it work. Granted, Vamp tribal has seen a lot of support over the past number of years with Innistrad 2.0 and Ixalan adding to Zendikar and Innistrad's Vamp tribal stuff. Give it a couple more blocks with vamp tribal and it'll be able to compete with Goblins and zombies pretty easily. I don't think anything will ever be able to match Elves in speed and explosiveness.
I just don't think Edgar is worth the hate. From my experience people tend to hate Eminence as an ability as it completely negates the reason to cast your commander. A commander that never needs to hit the battlefield to win a game is really strong. I play Inalla myself, and Eminence is kind of busted with some of the stronger abilities. Stuff like Oloro is completely negligible, but Edgar and Inalla can pull off a win without ever hitting the board.
I've never built or even thought about building Oloro or Meren, so I won't go into them.
Nekusar is a commander I've been looking at building for a very long time that I just haven't had the push to do so. Iirc, there hasn't been any particularly good cards printed in quite a while that really work with him. There was a Megrim variant printed in Amonket block, but that's about it and only if you want to run Nekusar that way. I plan on running Nekusar with a bunch of Howling Mine effects, Wheel of Fortune effects[/c] and Megrim Effects. Only reason I haven't built him is cause I'm missing a few cards and don't have the drive or funds to go out and get them.
That's actually about it. Protecting your graveyard from exile is very difficult and the few ways that do it are sort of a side-effect of what the cards actually do, like Shalai protecting from Tormod's Crypt.
You can always use cards that shuffle your graveyard back into your library, but ninety-nine times out of one hundred that defeats the whole purpose. Discarding an EldraziTitan shuffles your graveyard into your library. There's also Wheel of Sun and Moon in WG, but it makes graveyard recursion impossible. There's a couple of select instants or sorceries that let you shuffle some or all of your cards back in your library, but their harder to recur than any of the other options.
Surprisingly low amounts of cards in my meta that this would even be good for. There's the Beacon cycle, a couple of cards in the Zenith cycle, one person plays Clone Legion, and a couple of extra turn spells (most of which don't target). I'm typically the one playing Beacons and Zenith's though.
Second, decklists don't go in the main "Commander (EDH)" section. Decklists go in their appropriate subforum, either "Multiplayer Commander Decklists", "1 vs 1 Commander Decklists (French)", or "1 vs 1 Commander Decklists (Traditional)".
Finally, use card, deck, and mana tags. At the top of the post box, where you type your post, there's a couple of little pictures. The picture of a MTG card back places the card tags in your thread or around highlighted text (island). The picture off an MTG card front next to a stack of cards is does the same for the deck tags. The picture with mana symbols adds mana tags (U). You can also manually type these tags as they are bb code. Some mana symbols aren't available via mana tags, you can find those by clicking on the smiley face and going to the "MTG" section.
GUVorel of the Hull Clade - The only Simic commander I've ever found interesting. A general counters on all the cards deck. Main win condition is Darksteel Reactor which is always nice and people don't expect it to win in like 2 turns after reactor hits. Cards like Liquimetal Coating allows the commander to double the counters on anything.
I'm having two problems:
1: Win conditions that revolve around lands.
Worm Harvest is a pretty good start, but I need more. I need something like an infinite combo, like the old Crucible of Worlds + Zuran Orb + Fastbond combo but legal.
2: More ways to get lands from my grave into my hand.
I know of a couple of good options. Life from the Loam, Creeping Renaissance, Tilling Treefolk, and Praetor's Counsel are really good, but only two of them are easily repeatable.
Anyone know of some cards that can help? I know older cards pretty well, but I haven't played much in the past few years and don't know a lot of the new stuff.
It honestly feels like they were playing this whole release a bit too safe. I can honestly say that every legendary creature spoiled thus far (looking only at mtgsalvations spoiler list) is a bit disappointing in some way, and even a bunch of other cards spoiled thus far, but I'm not going to spend two hours typing up why they all disappoint me.
I've got 4 commanders from this set that interest me, though I think only one of them will be able to keep that interest past a few games with the deck.
Gyrus, Waker of Corpes is the one that interests me the most. He makes tokens of the cards, without paying any mana, and can do larger creatures as the game goes on. It's going to be a weird fusion of reanimator, token, and combo that I think is going to be a blast to play. I do have the concern that the deck with turn into "good stuff" fairly easily which I am going to try and avoid. I think this will be the the second, ever, Jund commander to peak my interest; the first being Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire.
Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor seems like a one-trick pony. My goal would be to give people survivors, play Repercussion, and insure that there are no survivors. EDIT: That moment that someone drops a Skullclamp and awkwardly wins the game.
Varina, Lich Queen is a pretty solid zombie commander. She's far from the top of the list for commanders I want to use for zombie tribal, but mostly cause I haven't actually played zombie tribal yet. I greatly dislike her second ability and I would have liked to be able to target an opponent's cards even if it were limited to creatures. She seems good aside from the second ability which I find fairly disappointing with two colors that are very good at recursion effects.
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is pretty good. She has the potential to be pretty powerful and fun. Tutor for a high cmc card and use a bunch of Brainstorm effects with Yuriko to kill everyone. I'd find it fun for one or two games and then never play it again. There aren't enough ninjas to do any sort of half ok tribal without Conspiracy. Interesting while being super boring and I'll probably never actually build now that I think about it.
Gyrus, Waker of Corpses? I like it, well a lot better than everything else. It's almost a colorshifted Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. It's ability is weaker as it doesn't bring the actual creature back, but you also don't have to pay mana for it and it's based on how much you payed for him instead of just being 2 power or less. Honestly, with the access to token doublers and the fact that Gyrus is going to get bigger as the game goes on, I think he's actually stronger than Alesha. Imagine casting Gyrus for six the turn after a doubling season, swinging with haste, and making two Protean Hulks to sac at end of combat. I think Gyrus has the ability to be pretty nuts, and doesn't need voltron cards to make it big enough to be able to attack late game.
Gyrus is actually the second commander spoiled that I actually want to use. Really hoping Varchild is in the Jund deck. Though, I am wildly disappointed at the fact that the only deck that has an actual theme is the Izzet Artifact deck. Honestly kind of wishing they had stuck to tribals for a few more releases.
Yeah, beginning of combat does make it a lot better. Edited my post for the correction. I do still stand by my Trostani comparison. Though, now that I think about it, Trostani does have access to 4 token doublers and has an ability that can keep you alive near indefinitely so long as no one combos off or get's in commander damage. Casual meta, Trostani is just better imo. Competitive meta, they're both going to lose a lot more often than they win.
Yeah, yeah. Someone made the combat correction already. Also, just because I'm already replying to you, please work on your spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
As for the legendary creatures... I'm not impressed.
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer seems good until you realize it makes a token and allows you to shift your copies once per turn cycle, but on a 6cmc 4/4. My only comparison is Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, but Brudiclad let's you copy any permanent type and Trostani's ability is reusable as it's a tap ability and not an upkeep trigger. Both go rather nuts with Helm of the Host, but trostani can do it a lot faster with some untap effects. I was honestly a lot more excited for Trostani than Brudiclad and Mirrorworks is one of my favorite cards ever.
Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor seems interesting. Interesting where I'd want to drop Repercussion, give everyone a bunch of tokens, and then Blaphemous Act for the win, but I could do that in any red deck. Varchild really, really needed some sort of evasion. A 3/3 for 3 with no evasion that gives opponents tokens when it deals damage is honestly hot garbage. Either you ramp it out early and give people tokens that are going to help them, or it comes down on turn 3 and is completely negligible. Honestly just hot garbage. Grand Melee seems funny, but the second someone plays Skullclamp and just starts winning the game is... Varchild is just bad. Interesting, potentially monored grouphug, but otherwise just bad.
Tawnos had so much potential as a card. Almost any variation of his ability would be good. Why does he have to tap for it? WWWWHHHYYY? The only reason I'm not considering him strictly worse than Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient is because he's also blue. Yeah, he can copy activated abilities, but Rings of Brighthearth is a card. Had this been Rings of Brighthearth on a commander, even with an artifact restriction, would have been amazing. The fact that it costs UR and has him tap to do it is absolute just disappointing (I really almost typed garbage there... I really wanted to type garbage there.). Pemmin's Aura and Freed from the Real are cards, but he's just so disappointing.
I just don't think Edgar is worth the hate. From my experience people tend to hate Eminence as an ability as it completely negates the reason to cast your commander. A commander that never needs to hit the battlefield to win a game is really strong. I play Inalla myself, and Eminence is kind of busted with some of the stronger abilities. Stuff like Oloro is completely negligible, but Edgar and Inalla can pull off a win without ever hitting the board.
Nekusar is a commander I've been looking at building for a very long time that I just haven't had the push to do so. Iirc, there hasn't been any particularly good cards printed in quite a while that really work with him. There was a Megrim variant printed in Amonket block, but that's about it and only if you want to run Nekusar that way. I plan on running Nekusar with a bunch of Howling Mine effects, Wheel of Fortune effects[/c] and Megrim Effects. Only reason I haven't built him is cause I'm missing a few cards and don't have the drive or funds to go out and get them.
That's actually about it. Protecting your graveyard from exile is very difficult and the few ways that do it are sort of a side-effect of what the cards actually do, like Shalai protecting from Tormod's Crypt.
You can always use cards that shuffle your graveyard back into your library, but ninety-nine times out of one hundred that defeats the whole purpose. Discarding an Eldrazi Titan shuffles your graveyard into your library. There's also Wheel of Sun and Moon in WG, but it makes graveyard recursion impossible. There's a couple of select instants or sorceries that let you shuffle some or all of your cards back in your library, but their harder to recur than any of the other options.
Second, decklists don't go in the main "Commander (EDH)" section. Decklists go in their appropriate subforum, either "Multiplayer Commander Decklists", "1 vs 1 Commander Decklists (French)", or "1 vs 1 Commander Decklists (Traditional)".
Finally, use card, deck, and mana tags. At the top of the post box, where you type your post, there's a couple of little pictures. The picture of a MTG card back places the card tags in your thread or around highlighted text (island). The picture off an MTG card front next to a stack of cards is does the same for the deck tags. The picture with mana symbols adds mana tags (U). You can also manually type these tags as they are bb code. Some mana symbols aren't available via mana tags, you can find those by clicking on the smiley face and going to the "MTG" section.
I assume your commander is Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief?
WG Trostani, Selesnya's Voice - I really enjoyed it. I get to play Mimic Vat, Mirror Works, Minion Reflector, Phyrexian Processor, and now Helm of the Host when I get around to rebuilding it... which may be soon if I keep thinking about it. Using Helm of the Host to make more Trostani so that all the Trostani can make more Trostani seems a bit hilarious.
GU Vorel of the Hull Clade - The only Simic commander I've ever found interesting. A general counters on all the cards deck. Main win condition is Darksteel Reactor which is always nice and people don't expect it to win in like 2 turns after reactor hits. Cards like Liquimetal Coating allows the commander to double the counters on anything.
I did not know this existed and I want a bunch. So... Both March of the Machines and Titania's Song just draws the game if one of your creatures die.
Pawn of Ulamog and Ogre Slumlord both make tokens when nontoken creatures die.